An engaging tale about family, maturation, and love.
A YA novel offers a coming-of-age story about life’s uncertainties facing a New York City teenager.
Carly Klein, a high school sophomore, is a smart Jewish girl (she “read the captions to New Yorker cartoons when she was four”) on the verge of becoming an adult in the early 1980s. Yet she is struggling at Baxter, a girls’ school on 79th Street and the East River. She lives with her parents: Gwen, a psychiatrist on staff at Mount Sinai Hospital who counsels patients in her home office, and Joel, who works in a Midtown advertising office. Carly’s best friend, Lauren Lensky, has a French mother (Tibou) and a comfortable, welcoming home—the opposite of her own home. Carly dreams of being Tibou’s daughter and secretly reads her mother’s confidential patient notebooks. Through these notebooks, Daniel Strauss becomes Carly’s favorite patient. Daniel is a “blind junior at Columbia College who majors in music and plays jazz saxophone.” Carly impulsively decides to follow Daniel one night. She also sneaks out to the Downunder Café, where Daniel is playing his saxophone one evening. At the cafe, she sees Edwin, her father’s assistant, with her dad and must face a new reality. Later, posing as a girl named Serena, she becomes a reader for Daniel, which complicates her life further. Harlan’s believable and compelling depiction of Carly’s home life includes a mother becoming absorbed in her work and a father coming out as gay. In this well-crafted tale, the turmoil between her parents results in Carly heading to a camp in Colorado. She doesn’t want to go, so she fights packing and hates the camp once there. Additionally, Harlan’s vivid portrait of Lauren’s loving family provides a rich contrast and an escape for Carly. A minor flaw surfaces in the scene in which Carly follows Daniel. Readers may question: Why isn’t Daniel or his dog aware of her presence? Wouldn’t he or his pooch eventually hear or smell her? But this minor misstep doesn’t spoil an engrossing story.
An engaging tale about family, maturation, and love.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away.
A Mexican American boy takes on heavy responsibilities when his family is torn apart.
Mateo’s life is turned upside down the day U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents show up unsuccessfully seeking his Pa at his New York City bodega. The Garcias live in fear until the day both parents are picked up; his Pa is taken to jail and his Ma to a detention center. The adults around Mateo offer support to him and his 7-year-old sister, Sophie, however, he knows he is now responsible for caring for her and the bodega as well as trying to survive junior year—that is, if he wants to fulfill his dream to enter the drama program at the Tisch School of the Arts and become an actor. Mateo’s relationships with his friends Kimmie and Adam (a potential love interest) also suffer repercussions as he keeps his situation a secret. Kimmie is half Korean (her other half is unspecified) and Adam is Italian American; Mateo feels disconnected from them, less American, and with worries they can’t understand. He talks himself out of choosing a safer course of action, a decision that deepens the story. Mateo’s self-awareness and inner monologue at times make him seem older than 16, and, with significant turmoil in the main plot, some side elements feel underdeveloped. Aleman’s narrative joins the ranks of heart-wrenching stories of migrant families who have been separated.
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7595-5605-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Black is building a complex mythology; now is a great time to tune in.
Black is back with another dark tale of Faerie, this one set in Faerie and launching a new trilogy.
Jude—broken, rebuilt, fueled by anger and a sense of powerlessness—has never recovered from watching her adoptive Faerie father murder her parents. Human Jude (whose brown hair curls and whose skin color is never described) both hates and loves Madoc, whose murderous nature is true to his Faerie self and who in his way loves her. Brought up among the Gentry, Jude has never felt at ease, but after a decade, Faerie has become her home despite the constant peril. Black’s latest looks at nature and nurture and spins a tale of court intrigue, bloodshed, and a truly messed-up relationship that might be the saving of Jude and the titular prince, who, like Jude, has been shaped by the cruelties of others. Fierce and observant Jude is utterly unaware of the currents that swirl around her. She fights, plots, even murders enemies, but she must also navigate her relationship with her complex family (human, Faerie, and mixed). This is a heady blend of Faerie lore, high fantasy, and high school drama, dripping with description that brings the dangerous but tempting world of Faerie to life.
Black is building a complex mythology; now is a great time to tune in. (Fantasy. 14-adult)Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-31027-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2017
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